Senator says “blogosphere” tipped DPS off to potential violence

Texas Senate Administration chairman Kevin Eltife said Monday the Texas Department of Public Safety learned that some groups planned to heave projectiles into the Texas Senate gallery by monitoring online chatter in the days preceding Friday’s debate.

Eltife said DPS set up a table to screen backpacks after monitoring the “blogosphere” and realized that a huge crowd would attend Friday’s debate. Law enforcement officers found mention on the Internet of some groups who planned to throw projectiles, including urine and paint, onto the Senate chamber from the gallery, he said.

He stressed that DPS officials had told him that the aggressors were not part of the anti-abortion or abortion rights movements, but “third party groups” who wanted to make a statement. “They specifically said it was not Planned Parenthood…but some third party groups trying to stir things up,” said Eltife.

DPS has been criticized for “confiscating” tampons, but Eltife said that action occurred after officers stopped a woman with a cache of “about 75? feminine hygiene products attempting to enter the Senate Gallery. News reporters on Friday could not find a trooper who could personally verify that jars of urine and feces were confiscated. A DPS press release claimed that 1 jar of urine, 18 jars of feces and three filled with paint were found by officers.

Eltife said DPS did not “confiscated” jars of urine and feces from protestors at the state Capitol, explaining that officers did not keep any of the material as evidence because they made no arrests.

“We didn’t confiscate and keep the damn things. They either threw it away or they left,” said Eltife. “They (DPS) didn’t confiscate them and keep them as evidence.”

Eltife praised DPS’ handling of the tense situation, which resulted in 12 arrests, as well as the hundreds of advocates for both sides of the issue who observed the debate peacefully. “They did an incredible job,” he said. “We were trying to protect the 500 people in the gallery who got to see the process work in a peaceful manner. “

Eltife said it was important to “look at the night in total. Ninety-nine percent of the pro-choice and pro-life people behaved incredibly well,” he said. But, “there are crazy people out there. We had seven knot-heads who chained themselves to the gallery railing. I was worried someone was going to go over the railing.”